By Kristen Cooper, Product Marketing Manager, Training Services, Blackboard

In our current era of competing priorities, during which every organization is expected to do more with less, showing a beneficial return on your investments is critical. How do you measure the return on investment (ROI) from your technology investment?

Perhaps you consider the financial factor: Greater use of your system can translate into wider impact (i.e. helping more professionals in your workplace) at a lower cost per user.

Maybe you take into account the organizational factor: A successful technology implementation can increase the effectiveness of processes your organization follows to achieve its strategic goals.

Or, perhaps you emphasize the human factor: Technologies such as Blackboard^® software can provide opportunities to increase outreach and communication, which increases both employee satisfaction and productivity.

In most modern organizations a combination of these multiple factors contributes to the ROI they experience. So the question becomes: How do you manage the changes that a new technology causes within your organization, and how do you prepare your employees to best use the technology?

A thorough and comprehensive training plan can make the management of your system more efficient. Training also enables your employees to learn and share best practices that will ensure the reliability of your system, which will save your organization money by minimizing support and administrative costs.

Receiving training on Blackboard products, and course design within the software, can enable more effective delivery of information to the professionals in your workplace and students in the professional classroom. Increasing the use of your Blackboard implementation also enables outreach to your employees whose busy schedules or distant locations pose challenges for them.

Blackboard offers organizations many different opportunities for training faculty members and instructors, staff members, and system administrators in the use of Blackboard software to best support your organization’s strategic goals.

Matt MacLaughlin, Jr., a certified Blackboard SME and director of multiple courses for the Logistics Executive Development Department of the U.S. Army Logistics Management College, shares his experience on how his Blackboard training has impacted their business in both financial and logistical matters:

I could only accept 25 students into my Class A resident class. Through the successful conversion of these courses into a distance learning (dL) format in our Blackboard software, we’ve been able to double the enrollment per class—and one class even had an unbelievable 53 students at one time. Much of the demand for this format lies in the ease of access, and the reduced cost for the government. An even more important reason for having my course dL-ready and set in our Blackboard software is the access it gives our active military members stationed in the Middle East. I’ve had many students in different stages of deployment who’ve been grateful for the availability of the class and ease of taking it at their leisure.

Since I completed the Blackboard Certified Trainer Program, and am currently participating in the Blackboard Teaching and Learning Online Certification Series, the college relies on my guidance as a key asset as it transitions into the Army Logistics Management University and expands its online course offerings. In addition, I also provide counsel and advice to individual instructors who are interested in making sections of their courses Blackboard-ready, to accommodate and satiate the interests of the younger captains and members of the civilian workforce who are transitioning into the Department of Defense.

Blackboard training has a cascading effect in organizations when your employees gain the skill-sets they need to support their peers, colleagues and students in the workplace—and, in Mr. MacLaughlin’s case, stationed halfway around the world. Those professionals then become equipped with the necessary skills to perform their own duties most effectively and positively affect the people they encounter in the classroom, office, military base or battlefield.

Interested in learning more about the training opportunities Blackboard can offer your staff members and system administrators? Visit us on the Blackboard Web site or e-mail training@blackboard.com.